The Time Around Scars by Michael Ondaatje

A girl whom I've not spoken to
or shared coffee with for several years
writes of an old scar.
On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white,
the size of a leech.
I gave it to her 
brandishing a new Italian penknife.
Look, I said turning,
and blood spat onto her shirt.

My wife has scars like spread raindrops 
on knees and ankles,
she talks of broken greenhouse panes
and yet, apart from imagining red feet,
(a nymph out of Chagall)
I bring little to that scene.
We remember the time around scars,
they freeze irrelevant emotions
and divide us from present friends.
I remember this girl's face,
the widening rise of surprise.

And would she 
moving with lover or husband
conceal or flaunt it,
or keep it at her wrist
a mysterious watch.
And this scar I then remember
is a medallion of no emotion.

I would meet you now
and I would wish this scar
to have been given with
all the love 
that never occurred between us

And the Sunflower Weeps for the Sun, Its Flower by Jay Hopler

1
There is a hole in the garden. It is empty. I envy it.

Emptiness: the only freedom there is
In a fallen world.

2
Father Sunflower, forgive me—. I have been so preoccupied with
my backaches and my headaches,
With my sore back and my headaches and my beat-skipping heart,

I have ignored the subtle huzzah of the date palms and daisies, of
the blue daze and the date palms—

3
Or don’t forgive me, what do I care?
I am tired of asking for forgiveness; I am tired of being frightened
all the time.
I want to run down the street with a vicious erection,
Impaling everything, screaming obscenities
And flapping my arms; fuck the date palms,
Fuck the daisies—

4
As a man, I am a disappointment, I know that.
Is it my fault I was born in shadow? Through the banyan trees,

An entourage of slovenly blondes
Comes naked and begging—

5
My days fly from me as though from a murderer.
Can you blame them?
Behind us, the house is empty and quiet as light.

What have I done, Mother,
That I should spend my life
Alone? 

OMM: Dana Levin

oh doctor, angel, person healed,
      do you think this is grandeur, to see myself
as an avatar of healing,
      to see in the sick child the fever of the world,
and say to the people in the distant air
      circling and circling, like planets caught,
the fires of their own
      history's wreckage, Come down
into the burning,
      feel it,

so you can not live it anymore.


                                                          -"PERSONAL HISTORY"

Note to Reality by Tony Hoagland

Without even knowing it, I have 

believed in you for a long time.

When I looked at my blood under a microscope

                I could see truth multiplying over and over.

—Not police sirens, nor history books, not stage-three lymphoma

                                                                                     persuaded me

but your honeycombs and beetles; the dry blond fascicles of grass 

                                                              thrust up above the January snow. 

Your postcards of Picasso and Matisse,

                                         from the museum series on European masters. 

When my friend died on the way to the hospital

                                           it was not his death that so amazed me

but that the driver of the cab 

                                              did not insist upon the fare.

Quotation marks: what should we put inside them? 

Shall I say “I”  “have been hurt” “by”  “you,”  you neglectful monster?

I speak now because experience has shown me

                                 that my mind will never be clear for long.

I am more thick-skinned and male, more selfish, jealous, and afraid

                                   than ever in my life.

“For my heart is tangled in thy nets;

                              my soul enmeshed in cataracts of time...”

The breeze so cool today, the sky smeared with bluish grays and whites.

The parade for the slain police officer

goes past the bakery

and the smell of fresh bread 

makes the mourners salivate against their will.

 

Amor Fati by Jane Hirshfield

Little soul,

you have wandered

lost a long time.

The woods all dark now,

birded and eyed.

Then a light, a cabin, a fire, a door standing open.

The fairy tales warn you:

Do not go in,

you who would eat will be eaten.

You go in. You quicken.

You want to have feet.

You want to have eyes.

You want to have fears.

Lucky Duck by Sandra Lim

Be large with those small fears. The whole sky

has fallen on you and all you can do about it is

shout, dragging your fear-ettes by their pinked ears.

 

They dance a number now: consequence without

sequence. Lovingly broadminded in their

realization and ruin, expert at the parting shot.

 

Not so small after all, we micro to

macro, swelling to the horror shows

lifted from the sly ways of life.

 

You, both scorched and shining in the terror

of the equivocal moment, its box of cheeky

logics rattling cold certainties out of bounds

 

and into the plaits of a girl’s desirous ends.

A little debauched, the flirt in a freckling,

wondering spun to falling comes to this

 

pert contract of a paradox: saying things

because they will do no good, ringing change

in frumpy mono-determination, fruity and fruitless.

 

Exploded out of shelter, the tides come roaring in.

Let in the hoarse Cassandras and the dull pain of the

storyteller. You’ve needed those eyes all along.

 

We thought them disconcerting at first,

but it’s the only way. You live here now

having exchanged etiquette for energy.

 

Don’t be clever, don’t be shy! Participate today.

Yesterday you say everything for their own sake,

and soon enough, tomorrow, you learn a lot from them.

 

omm

Barking by Jim Harrison

The moon comes up. 

The moon goes down. 

This is to inform you 

that I didn’t die young. 

Age swept past me 

but I caught up. 

Spring has begun here and each day 

brings new birds up from Mexico. 

Yesterday I got a call from the outside 

world but I said no in thunder. 

I was a dog on a short chain 

and now there’s no chain.

Visitor by Brenda Shaughnessy

I am dreaming of a house just like this one

but larger and opener to the trees, nighter

than day and higher than noon, and you,

visiting, knocking to get in, hoping for icy

milk or hot tea or whatever it is you like. 

For each night is a long drink in a short glass. 

A drink of blacksound water, such a rush 

and fall of lonesome no form can contain it.

And if it isn’t night yet, though I seem to 

recall that it is, then it is not for everyone.

Did you receive my invitation? It is not 

for everyone. Please come to my house

lit by leaf light. It’s like a book with bright

pages filled with flocks and glens and groves

and overlooked by Pan, that seductive satyr

in whom the fish is also cooked. A book that 

took too long to read but minutes to unread—

that is—to forget. Strange are the pages 

thus. Nothing but the hope of company.

I made too much pie in expectation. I was 

hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a 

nightgown in a real way. Did you receive

my invitation? Written in haste, before 

leaf blinked out, before the idea fully formed.

An idea like a storm cloud that does not spill

or arrive but moves silently in a direction. 

Like a dark book in a long life with a vague

hope in a wood house with an open door.

Gay Pride Weekend, S.F., 1992 by Brenda Shaughnessy

I forgot how lush and electrified

it was with you. The shaggy

fragrant zaps continually passing

back and forth, my fingertip

to your clavicle, or your wrist

rubbing mine to share gardenia

oil. We so purred like dragonflies

we kept the mosquitoes away

and the conversation was heavy,

mother-lacerated childhoods

and the sad way we'd both

been both ignored and touched

badly. Knowing that being

fierce and proud and out and

loud was just a bright new way

to be needy. Please listen to me, oh

what a buzz! you're the only one 

I can tell. Even with no secret,

I could come close to your ear

with my mouth and that was

ecstasy, too. We barely touched

each other, we didn't have to

speak. The love we made leapt

to life like a cat in the space

between us (if there ever was 

space between us), and looked

back at us through fog. Sure,

this was San Francisco, it was

often hard to see. But fog always

burned off, too, so we watched

this creature to see if it knew

what it was doing. It didn't.

Short clip from the Violet Hour project. Check it out in person at 1520 N. Damen Ave. By the Damen blue line across from Big Star! 🌟 So much love! 🎥by: @visualfinesse 👈 _______________________________________________________ #oath #oaththeghost #positivevibration #violethour #oneoffhospitality #bigstar #avatar #avatarthelastairbender #avataraang #commissionedartist #mural #chicago #chicagoartist #film #visualfinesse #wickerpark #paint #create #oneconsciousness #alkaline

A post shared by Love > Fear (@oaththeghost) on May 7, 2017 at 8:22am PDT

Ne'ilah by Marge Piercy

The hinge of the year 

the great gates opening 

and then slowly slowly 

closing on us.

I always imagine those gates 

hanging over the ocean 

fiery over the stone grey 

waters of evening.

We cast what we must 

change about ourselves 

onto the waters flowing 

to the sea. The sins,

errors, bad habits, whatever 

you call them, dissolve. 

When I was little I cried 

out I! I! I! I want, I want.

Older, I feel less important, 

a worker bee in the hive 

of history, miles of hard 

labor to make my sweetness.

The gates are closing 

The light is failing

I kneel before what I love 

imploring that it may live.

So much breaks, wears 

down, fails in us. We must 

forgive our broken promises— 

their sharp shards in our hands.

mirror

OMM: DFW

On Alcohol by Sam Sax

my first drink was in my mother

my next, my bris. doctor spread red

wine across my lips. took my foreskin

•

every time i drink     i lose something

•

no one knows the origins of alcohol. tho surely an accident

before sacrament. agricultural apocrypha. enough grain stored up

for it to get weird in the cistern. rot gospel. god water

•

brandy was used to treat everything

from colds to pneumonia

frostbite to snake bites

tb patients were placed on ethanol drips

tonics & cough medicines

spooned into the crying mouths of children

•

each friday in synagogue a prayer for red

at dinner, the cemetery, the kitchen

spirits

•

how many times have i woke

strange in an unfamiliar bed?

my head neolithic

•

my grandfather died with a bottle in one hand

& flowers in the other. he called his drink his medicine

he called his woman

    she locked the door

•

i can only half blame alcohol for my overdose

the other half is my own hand

that poured the codeine    that lifted the red plastic again & again &

•

i’m trying to understand pleasure     it comes back

in flashes    every jean button thumbed open to reveal

a different man     every slurred & furious permission

•

i was sober a year before [          ] died

•

every time i drink     i lose someone

•

if you look close at the process of fermentation

you’ll see tiny animals destroying the living body

until it’s transformed into something more volatile

•

the wino outside the liquor store

mistakes me for his son

OMM: Rashid Johnson

Again by Ross Gay

Because I love you, and beneath the uncountable stars

I have become the delicate piston threading itself through your chest,

I want to tell you a story I shouldn’t but will and in the meantime neglect, Love,

the discordant melody spilling from my ears but attend,

instead, to this tale, for a river burns inside my mouth

and it wants both purgation and to eternally sip your thousand drippings;

and in the story is a dog and unnamed it leads to less heartbreak,

so name him Max, and in the story are neighborhood kids

who spin a yarn about Max like I’m singing to you, except they tell a child,

a boy who only moments earlier had been wending through sticker bushes

to pick juicy rubies, whose chin was, in fact, stained with them,

and combining in their story the big kids make

the boy who shall remain unnamed believe Max to be sick and rabid,

and say his limp and regular smell of piss are just two signs,

but the worst of it, they say, is that he’ll likely find you in the night,

and the big kids do not giggle, and the boy does not giggle,

but lets the final berries in his hand drop into the overgrowth

at his feet, and if I spoke the dream of the unnamed boy

I fear my tongue would turn an arm of fire so I won’t, but

know inside the boy’s head grew a fire beneath the same stars

as you and I, Love, your leg between mine, the fine hairs

on your upper thigh nearly glistening in the night, and the boy,

the night, the incalculable mysteries as he sleeps with a stuffed animal

tucked beneath his chin and rolls tight against his brother

in their shared bed, who rolls away, and you know by now

there is no salve to quell his mind’s roaring machinery

and I shouldn’t tell you, but I will,

the unnamed boy

on the third night of the dreams which harden his soft face

puts on pants and a sweatshirt and quietly takes the spade from the den

and more quietly leaves his house where upstairs his father lies dreamless,

and his mother bends her body into his,

and beneath these same stars, Love, which often, when I study them,

seem to recede like so many of the lies of light,

the boy walks to the yard where Max lives attached to a steel cable

spanning the lawn, and the boy brings hot dogs which he learned

from Tom & Jerry, and nearly urinating in his pants he tosses them

toward the quiet and crippled thing limping across the lawn,

the cable whispering above the dew-slick grass, and Max whimpers,

and the boy sees a wolf where stands this ratty

and sad and groveling dog and beneath these very stars

Max raises his head to look at the unnamed boy

with one glaucous eye nearly glued shut

and the other wet from the cool breeze and wheezing

Max catches the gaze of the boy who sees,

at last, the raw skin on the dog's flank, the quiver

of his spindly legs, and as Max bends his nose

to the franks the boy watches him struggle

to snatch the meat with gums, and bringing the shovel down

he bends to lift the meat to Max's toothless mouth,

and rubs the length of his throat and chin,

Max arching his neck with his eyes closed, now,

and licking the boy's round face, until the boy unchains the dog,

and stands, taking slow steps backward through the wet grass and feels,

for the first time in days, the breath in his lungs, which is cool,

and a little damp, spilling over his small lips, and he feels,

again, his feet beneath him, and the earth beneath them, and starlings

singing the morning in, and the somber movement of beetles

chewing the leaves of the white birch, glinting in the dark, and he notices,

Darling, an upturned nest beneath the tree, and flips it looking for the blue eggs

of robins, but finds none, and placing a rumpled crimson feather in his mouth

slips the spindly thicket into another tree, which he climbs

to watch the first hint of light glancing above the fields, and the boy

eventually returns to his thorny fruit bush where an occasional prick

leaves on his arm or leg a spot of blood the color of these raspberries

and tasting of salt, and filling his upturned shirt with them he beams

that he could pull from the earth that which might make you smile,

Love, which you’ll find in the fridge, on the bottom shelf, behind the milk,

in the bowl you made with your own lovely hands.